The phrase “modern conveniences” has been uttered in American society for decades. One of the earliest conveniences was the service concept of “eating out.” Here, we mean the notion of purchasing a meal in a restaurant instead of preparing a meal in one's home. The appeal to this particular service is based on several possible advantages, including a specialized restaurant environment, specialized food (e.g., French Cuisine), or simply elimination of the effort associated with preparing a meal.
Other conveniences have been brought on by the introduction of new technologies. For instance, the proliferation of affordable automobiles in the early 1900's brought about a significant change to the American lifestyle. Middle class America became an extremely mobile society, with daily travel of several miles becoming commonplace. By the 1950s, there was a perceived need to integrate the automobile into the restaurant experience. This patent pertains to this automobile-restaurant integration.
Perhaps the earliest attempt at integration was the “car hop” concept. Restaurants were designed to have a kitchen and a large car port. The car port would typically be large enough to accommodate several cars. Customers would enter the car port in their vehicles and be waited on by waitpersons known as “car hops.” While the car hop arrangement provided an enjoyable and often fun experience, it was quite inefficient. The car ports were limited in size, and providing service to each individual car took a fair bit of time. One technologic improvement to the car hop arrangement was the use of “service phones.” Service phones were used by customers to place orders directly from their vehicles, meaning that car hops were no longer responsible for taking customer orders, but were instead only responsible for delivering the food needed to fill the orders. However, while service phones helped, the physical limitations of the car port and the effort needed to delivery the food continued to make the car hop arrangement inefficient.
Fast food restaurants came on the scene at about the same time as car hop restaurants. While early fast food restaurants were not a direct attempt to integrate the concept of the automobile with that of the restaurant, the notion of “fast” food did not have much meaning in the pre-automobile era. After all, it did not really matter how “fast” the food could be prepared if transportation to and from the restaurant was impractical. Even still there was the perceived need to better integrate the concepts of the automobile and fast food. A well-known solution to this need for integration is the “drive-up window.” While no one can be sure where and when the first drive-up window was used, drive-up windows became fairly common in the 1970's and 1980's; and today, it is difficult to find a fast food restaurant without a drive-up window.
While drive-up windows currently represent the greatest degree of automobile-restaurant integration, present solutions are extremely inefficient. The order processing used in today's drive-up window arrangements is basically the same as that used inside the fast food restaurant itself. Customers wait in line, determine what they want to order, and present their order to the teller. A menu is displayed for review by the customers. The customers then determine what to order and present their order to the teller when asked.
While this line-oriented process works well inside the restaurant, it is exceedingly inefficient outside the restaurant in the drive-up window line. Because of the size of automobiles and the distance between each automobile, only one customer is able to see the menu at a time. Thus, customers loose the opportunity to formulate their order while waiting in line. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the drive-up menu and the ordering position are typically located at the same place, which means that the customer is asked to formulate their order and present it to the teller at the same time. This recurring scenario causes several problems. First, the customer is frustrated and annoyed because they are being asked to do two things at once. Second, the customer will often need to ask for more time, which costs the restaurant money. Third, individuals in cars behind the ordering car become annoyed and frustrated with the delay and in some cases communicate their frustration to the ordering car, resulting in embarrassment and further annoyance and anger.
Yet another problem with today's drive-up window process is the two-way speaker system that is typically used to aurally exchange orders and information between the automobile and the teller. Often times, traffic and engine noise make communicating a difficult proposition, which of course causes additional frustration and annoyance.
Without an improved mechanism for processing automobile orders, the fast food industry will continue to annoy and frustrate customers and waste valuable time and money.